Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/50

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��HISTORY OF OHIO.

��year, Alexander Spottswood was made Governor of Virginia. No sooner did he assume the functions of ruler, than, casting his eye over his dominion, he saw the great West beyond the Alleghany Mount- ains unoccupied by the English, and rapidly filling with the French, who he observed were gradually confining the English to the Atlantic Coast. His prophetic eye saw at a glance the aniinus of the whole scheme, and he determined to act promptly on the defensive. Through his representation, the Virginia Assembly was induced to make an appro- priation to defray the expense of an exploration of the mountains, and see if a suitable pass could not then be found where they could be crossed. The Governor led the expedition in person. The pass was discovered, a route marked out for future em- igrants, and the party returned to Williamsburg. There the Governor established the order of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," presented his report to the Colonial Assembly and one to his King. In each report, he exposed with great bold- ness the scheme of the French, and advised the building of a chain of forts across to the Ohio, and the formation of settlements to counteract them. The British Government, engrossed with other matters, neglected his advice. Forty years after, they remembered it, only to regret that it was so thoughtlessly disregarded.

Individuals, however, profited by his advice. By 1730, traders began in earnest to cross the mount- ains and gather from the Indians the stores beyond. They now began to adopt a system, and abandoned the heretofore renegade habits of those who had superseded them, many of whom never returned to the Atlantic Coast. In 1742, John Howard de- scended the Ohio in a skin canoe, and, on the Mississip})i was taken prisoner by the French. His captivity did not in the least deter others from coming. Indeed, the date of his voyage was the commencement of a vig(jrous trade with the In- dians by the English, who crossed the AUeghanies by the route discovered by Gov. Spottswood. In 1748, Conrad Weiser, a German of Herenberg, who had ac(}uired in early life a knowledge of the Mo- hawk tongue by a residence among them, was sent on an embassy to the Shawanees on the Ohio. He went as far as Logstown,a Shawanee village on the north bank of the Ohio, about seventeen miles be- low the site of Pittsburgh. Here he met the chiefs in counsel, and secured their promise of aid against the French.

The principal ground of the claims of the English in the Northwest was the treaty with the

��Five Nations — the Iroquois. This powerful confed- eration claimed the jurisdiction over an immense extent of country. Their policy differed considera- bly from other Indian tribes. They were the only confederation which attempted any form of gov- ernment in America. They were often termed the " Six Nations," as the entrance of another tribe into the confederacy made that number. They were the conquerors of nearly all tribes from Lower Canada, to and beyond the Mississippi. They only exacted, however, a tribute from the conquered tribes, leaving them to manage their own internal affairs, and stipulating that to them alone did the right of cession belong. Their country, under these claims, embraced all of America north of the Cherokee Nation, in Virginia; all Kentucky, and all the Northwest, save a district in Ohio and Indi- ana, and a small section in Southwestern Illinois, claimed by the Miami Confederacy. The Iroquois, or Six Nations, were the terror of all other tribes. It was they who devastated the Illinois country about Rock Fort in 1680, and caused wide-spread alarm among all the Western Indians. In 1684, Lord Howard, Governor of Virginia, held a treaty with the Iroquois at Albany, when, at the request of Col. Duncan, of New York, they placed them- selves under the protection of the English. They made a deed of sale then, by treaty, to the British Government, of a vast tract of country south and east of the Illinois River, and extending into Can- ada. In 1726, another deed was drawn up and signed by the chiefs of the national confederacy by which their lands were conveyed in trust to England, " to be protected and defended by His Majesty, to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs."*

If the Six Nations had a good claim to the West- ern country, there is but little doubt but England was justified in defending their country against the French, as, by the treaty of Utrecht, they had agreed not to invade the lands of Britain's Indian allies. This claim was vigorously contested by France, as that country claimed the Iroquois had no lawful jurisdiction over the West. In all the disputes, the interests of the contending nations was, however, the paramount consideration. The rights of the Indians were little regarded.

The British also purchased land by the treaty of Lancaster, in 1744, wherein they agreed to pay the Six Nations for land settled unlawfully in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. The In-

��* Annals of the West.

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